Maradona with His Team before World Cup Qualifying match
The news didn’t take me by surprise, at all. Because this was the most natural outcome. Diego Maradona had taken over the baton of Argentina’s soccer team. It is a celebration time for soccer fans, especially those who love the Latin American spell. Maradona will coach the team for the FIFA World Cup 2010. I am sure, the world will wait with baited breath to see Diego’s team spewing fires on the field.
If I am asked to name a single sportsman who represents the entire game to me, it will be Diego Maradona without thinking twice. To me, Maradona is football and football is Maradona. I was a kid during the 1986 Soccer World Cup when Maradona almost single-handedly (well, yeah it wasn’t hand but foot though) took the team to win the World Cup. It wasn’t magic, but something more than that. People also talk about his association with drugs, his becoming obese and his behavioral inconsistencies. But when it’s football, this all-time great footballer’s name is pronounced with respect and admiration.
Do great players make great coaches – the doubt often plagues my mind. While the world is rejoicing that the arrival of Maradona will infuse an aura of invincibility in the Argentine soccer team the doubt hangs on. If history is something to go by, great players often fail when it comes to coaching.
Haven’t you seen a brilliant student getting confused when made to teach a below average student. The primary reason is the fact that since they are above the common players they fail to understand the psychology of an average footballer pushing him to greater heights. To be a good coach you have to be able to understand each everyone’s problem and solve them instantly.
As it is said that “deeds, not stones, are the true monuments of the great”, I hope that we can say the same for Maradona – the coach too! Since the man is Maradona the greatest footballer of the modern era we all expect him to turn the table. If there is any one who can change the common aphorism in the world football that “great players do not make great coaches” then it is him and only him.
Viva Maradona !!